Ten Best

Meh.

"Just pick your best 10, Ross." Or something to that effect.

Easier said than done.

A couple of months ago, a friend reached out to me with an invitation. His small town was organizing a show at their art gallery, whereby photographers from Eastern Ontario and the surrounding regions would be displaying some photographs, and he thought that my photos should be included in the show.

He was a friend to the gallery and would also be displaying some of his work. "If I can sell even one of my photos, you'll be able to sell all of yours," he told me. I was humbled by his praise and accepted the invitation.

All I had to do, he said, was to select 10 of my photos. There is no theme for the show, as of yet. "We'll come up with one once we've seen all the entries."

There were a couple of photos that immediately came to mind, and my friend even suggested one of those images. "I know exactly where we'd hang it in the gallery. It's sort of the place of honour."

Again, I was humbled.

Very few of my photos have been printed. In our house, there are only so many walls upon which we can hang a print. A couple of years ago, when DW and I were converting Kid 1's room into a study—after she had moved out—we printed a half dozen or so of my photos, most of which took up the walls in this room; one, that adorns the hallway on our second floor; and another that we've hung over our bed.

A lot of those photos have meaning for us but when I look at them with a more critical eye, I wonder if they have any kind of market appeal?

Some, no.

So, in early January and over this past weekend, I started going through all of my photos with one question in mind: would a stranger find any of my photos good enough to want to hang on their walls? It's one of the hardest questions I can put to myself because I'm extremely critical of my photos. There are perhaps only a handful of them that I feel are good enough to hang in a gallery.

I say I've started going through all of my photos, but that's a gross over-exaggeration. Going back more than 40 years, I've taken tens of thousands of photos. Years ago, I had purchased a scanner to transform my 35mm negatives and slides into digital files, and I've only scanned a small fraction of them, yet still have a digital file folder that is holding thousands of these converted image files.

My thousands of 35mm photos, in of themselves, make only a small fraction of photos I've shot, as the digital age allowed me (and every other photographer) to shoot countless shots, not having to worry about film.

It's a blessing and a curse, am I right?

I like to think that I've digitized the best of my old photos, so I've sorted which of those I'm considering for the exhibit. There are only two of those, and one, I've already printed on a 24" x 36" canvas. The other shot is in a file folder with other images that I've looked at and have considered potential for printing.

DW, who is unapologetically my biggest critic, has already pointed to some of the photos on our walls and has said, "That one would sell." I've shown her some of my unprinted images, to which she's said "Meh," or "Maybe," or "Nope."

DW liked this photo until I said the sky was fake: she then gave it a hard "Nope!"

So the search is on for my 10 best photos of all time. And once that search is over, the next step will be to decide the size that I want to print that image, what frame I want to place it in, and (most difficultly) how much to charge for each print.

I still have plenty of time: the show will be held in July. But knowing my penchant for procrastination, the months could go by in no time. I've given myself until the end of February to choose the 10 images and until the end of March to decide the size, mat, and frame.

If you've been following The Brown Knowser for a while and have seen my end-of-year, favourite-photos posts or if you've encountered a photo in any of my other posts and think it's worthy of exhibiting (Wordless Wednesday, Photo Friday), let me know in the Comments section, below.

I'll provide more information about the show when a firm date is set. It is likely to run from a couple of weeks to a month, depending on the interest. If you're in the Eastern Ontario region, or nearby, I'd love to see you there.

Stay tuned.